One of the couples down the very short street from me just adopted their first baby. I don’t know them very well, but the first time I saw them with the baby all swaddled, I practically yelled at them to take my phone number and call me whenever they wanted someone else to just hold the baby for a minute so they could take a breath. Since I work from home, it’s a very real option that I can come over to help. Part of me is trying to enforce the old precedent from this town that everyone pitches in, as the old timers complain about how people don’t get together here anymore. My hope is to have a baby next year, and we’ll be three hours from a good hospital and our closest relatives will be a 16 hr drive. We chose where we settled, but whew a little additional infrastructure could mean so much, especially if we have any difficulties. Always appreciate you pushing these conversations and can’t wait to check out this book.
We adopted a newborn seven years ago and have made it this far because of the kindness of neighbors and strangers in no small part. I hope your neighbors take your number and call you!
If my mom doesn't give me this book for Christmas I will be surprised and disappointed.
That Arianna Rebolini post...it is so important to be able to talk about that. And a related but distinct idea that a lot of our lives would be better if we didn't have kids. Like, my kid is one of the best things in my life -- but that's partly because my kid's existence makes it so difficult for other parts of my life to be good and sustainable. A ton of things would be better if I hadn't had him, say if he had been a third miscarriage and we'd given up. I wouldn't have *him* and at this point it's really crushing to imagine that, but, like, those first weeks of the pandemic when everyone else was talking about the exciting meals they were making and my husband kept asking what we should make, I kept saying "you don't get it, those people have extra time now. we do not have extra time."
Was right there with you in the pandemic. All my friends were binge watching shows. I was….binge watching my baby. 🤣 signed, didn’t make a single loaf of banana bread.
I bought this book for myself as a Christmas present. I had my local bookseller order it for me and I picked it up yesterday. I took one look at it heartbreakingly knew I couldn’t wrap it and put it under the tree as I didn’t want me kids to see me opening it. So instead last night when they were in bed I started reading it.
As a mother of a 1.5 and 3 year old, I feel like I’m drowning, and I appreciate this article and discourse. I am wondering if Jess’s book has any mention of whiteness. I know the abhorrent Black maternal health crisis is mentioned — as it should be — but I’m beginning to wonder if white, American mothers (myself among them) are uniquely positioned to find mothering young children completely impossible. I wonder if this stems from the fact that, for most of my life, I have not had to face reality. I mean this literally, not philosophically. I was sheltered from so many problems due to my whiteness and class privilege. (One example: Police? No problem for white women. Why worry about that?)
Then, I had children. And I was forced to face THEIR realities including (but not limited to) THEIR negative emotions, my own which I had avoided at all costs. It has been a harrowing, incredibly difficult experience for me. And of course, worsened by living in a society with no structural support for parents.
But I wonder if the “unsustainability of American motherhood” is tied to the “unsustainability of white supremacy” as a foundation of our society.
Some examples spring to mind: For decades, gun violence has been a problem in predominantly Black schools. Now, it’s a problem in white schools and us white people are all “oh my God how could this happen?” We’ve been LETTING it happen; we’ve been avoiding it; we’ve been sheltered from reality. And of course, childcare (and college!) should be affordable, but for how long have white women been exploiting women of color for childcare as a “solution” and not thinking about, for example, the fact that their nanny can’t afford to raise her own children?
Have these problems always existed and we are just finally facing them?
I am going to close with a quote from James Baldwin I think about all the time — I feel there is connection to how difficult motherhood feels for me, though I can’t fully articulate it.
“The American sense of reality is dictated by what Americans are trying to avoid, and if you’re trying to avoid reality, how can you face it?”
I think this is a worthwhile and critical thing to note, and I'd love for the author to dig into this a bit. As a biracial woman with white presenting children, this is just what I have noticed: within middle and upper middle class white families there isn't the same push to know and grow in domestic related skills. And why not? Childcare? You're above that, outsource it! Cooking and cleaning? No way, outsource it. This is why at the beginning of the pandemic there was such a shock for *some* (highly educated, urban, usually white) women-- it was the first time they were fully responsible for domestic labor and because they hadn't been taught basic homemaking skills it was a rude awakening. I know so few young woman who babysit. In college I watched peers pursue only career-boosting internships. I worked at a daycare and later as a nanny, twice. When I became a mother at thirty it still had with it the shocks that come with entering into a new phase, but the years of watching other people's children became treasured job experience. I could never be above domesticity because I really couldn't swing the unpaid internship and didn't have a trust fund bolstering me up. I also loved children and valued domestic labor, which of course, has made motherhood significantly easier.
Yes!! This comment brings up so much for me. I am a white SAHM who was raised by a white SAHM. My mother raised 4 kids in the “women can do it all” 90’s and it, sadly, seems to me that she didn’t value the (immense) domestic labor she did then, and, in a way, doesn’t value what I do now. She never taught me basic domestic skills. (She did it ALL.) It’s, of course, much more than just her. Most of my white mom friends work outside the home, and when I complain (who wouldn’t?) about motherhood from time to time, the proposed answer is almost always “get a job and send your kids to daycare.” I think what I really need to learn is: How do *I* learn to value domestic labor, when it seems my racial group sees it as something best avoided?
Yep. My white middle class mom literally did it ALL and doesn't understand why I struggle so much to do it all. Her advice to me was to just sleep less! Sorry not sorry mom, but I actually need to sleep more because of my chronic health issues or I stop functioning.
I think it's because the expectations we had growing up as white girls into white women didn't match the reality. She grew up working on a farm and wanted differently for her daughter - hence the big academic push and no domestic push. I grew up seeing the inequality of my parents but expected differently when my husband and I became parents and then was shocked when that didn't happen. Instead of white heterosexual-appearing couples dividing the labor, it all still falls on the mom, with the only way to survive being to outsource it.
I feel like I will never get out of debt because I don't have enough hours in the day to not outsource domestic tasks. I have mostly male friends and no matter how many times I try to talk to them about mental and emotional labor stuff they don't get it at all. It's maddening.
A reply to the portion of this about our mothers having done it all for us... same here from a woman raised immigrant/working class white Hispanic family.
I joke with my partner (a man) that I was raised to think I would have a career and someone else would do what our mothers did. As a man, he was raised the same way.
So what we really need is another person to do everything our mothers did, which we have no interest or time to do as we both work in full-time jobs and are both "breadwinners" as well as parents. I suppose other people (smarter people, perhaps) hire folks to do this for them. We haven't done that-- before or during pandemic. Mostly we just share duties and let things be a bit messier than our mothers did-- and sometimes, we just struggle. Also, we are paying for childcare for two kids not yet old enough for public school. So we pay a lot for that.
There's a poem by Kate Baer in "And Yet"-- called "Help Wanted: A Bonus Wife," I believe, about exactly this. A line: "Duties include perpetual motion, detailed observation, the ability to suppress a violent scream. You don't have to be beautiful. You don't have to be anything but here."
"I joke with my partner (a man) that I was raised to think I would have a career and someone else would do what our mothers did. As a man, he was raised the same way."
"Her husband had not done these things. He said they simply were not an option for him because of his work schedule. He added, sincerely, “but I don’t expect you to do these things.”
She replied, “Well if not you and not me, then who exactly would be the person to do them?” He stared blankly.
I understood her frustration and I also understood that he truly had never considered this before, not because he thinks women should be in the kitchen and home raising children. Quite the contrary. He frequently talks about how much he admires what his wife has done in her career and that he would not want to be with a woman who preferred traditional gender roles. However, because he is a man raised in a culture that has allowed him not to have to think really think about these things, the thought that having children would impact his career or the way he does work never crossed his mind."
I mean, I get it - education gave me easier access to work where I'd use my brain instead of wearing out my body with the benefits of a stable salary with paid time off.
I'd like to understand how white feminism plays a role in it all, too. I guess it's the underlying assumption that if you're successful enough in the white collar world that you can just outsource the domestic work to a woman of color?
I'm sorry I am just replying now... I don't have notifications turned on. I think you're really on to something here with the academic push and not the domestic one. I often feel like there's a one dimensional view of success (that isn't true and is quite outdated). I noticed the Gen X-ers in my neighborhood with teenagers don't encourage their daughters to babysit, they're focused on them getting made captain (which I'll admit, I think is a ridiculous and silly pursuit) so they can get into a "good" college. I think underneath this is anxiety around whiteness (I live in a majority white community) and wanting their children to succeed when there's competition from other students who have had more access to private schools, ACT tutors, etc... I also think we can't divorce the ingrained idea that many, many white elites (including white feminists) hold that domestic labor isn't for them.
I'm going to come at this from a different point of view, as a lifelong single person. I have all the compassion in the world for stressed out moms and understand our system in the US really is screwed up. In my 20's / 30s my best friend in college, who everyone agreed was "most likely to succeed" got pregnant with twins immediately after graduation, then had another girl a few years later. Dad was not much help so I was there a lot to help with babysitting and just being there with moral support and caring for the girls. So I DO get it. However, I also noted that the topic of how addressing these problems is going to impact others is somewhat elided, and framed as if they don't "care about others" or their self-interest is less important than a mom's. There is already a considerable "single penalty" in the US that some studies estimate amounts to almost a million dollars over a lifetime. Higher tax rate, unshared costs, etc. But it's also a social penalty--the expectation that singles can take up any slack in the workplace because they "don't have families" ( I once had a job where I had to work every holiday for just that reason), being taken less seriously (especially as a single female), or even seen as somehow socially "off" because you're not married. So, yes, I do wonder how addressing these issues that do so obviously need addressing is going to impact my particular social group. Because it will, and if we object to that, or raise concerns, I guarantee being vilified as "not caring" will be the kind reaction.
Not a bio mom but have helped raise children and have seen a lot of children being raised in my family and I wish more people talked about the women who hate being parents/mothers. Some people really hate it and they shouldn’t be shamed for that! I love children but not all people do and that’s fine! And the problem is all of these messages society sends women don’t allow for that at all, and it’s not like you can send them back once you’ve had them and realize you hate it. I want a world where we allow for all of it. And yes some, maybe most, women love their children even if they hate parenting but also some don’t. And wouldn’t it be a better world for those kids if there was community that could help support that woman instead of shaming her? That’s where my hope goes-into a society that truly supports the children and the parents in it.
This. The discussion has made me think about my own mom, with whom I have a fraught relationship. While she would deny it, I suspect she did not enjoy parenting and resented what she had to give up. You can't always suppress that multi-year frustration, so it came out in other ways that did some damage. If social expectations had given her permission to be conflicted, she might have been happier. I have a bit more compassion for her now.
I was curious to read some of the responses to Arianna Rebolini’s tweet about not enjoying being a mom, and while I was scrolling through her feed to find it I noticed that she posted an update on 9/15/22 saying that she now does very much enjoy being a mom. That update just made me wonder is there anyone who dislikes parenting for longer than just a 3 year blip while their kids are young? I feel like the update undid the point of the original tweet which was to normalize not loving being a mom.
There's a great book called "Regretting Motherhood" by Orna Donath that you might check out to see the perspectives of people who never enjoyed being a parent! I think the older the kids get, the more taboo it is to say that you dislike parenting, so it can be hard to find stuff to read about it. Donath did a big study of women (located in Israel) who regretted becoming mothers; women with kids of all ages (even grandmothers!) who discuss their dislike of the parental role.
Love this suggestion — I want to check it out! I think you're absolutely correct that it becomes more taboo to say that you dislike parenting as you get farther into it (because of the myth that it somehow gets easier, so you shouldn't dislike it). Lack of access to birth control + societal norms made it so that there was so little choice in whether or not a woman became a mother until very, very recently — of *course* there are people who didn't like it, even if that dislike remains, for so many, unspeakable.
As someone who also had hyperemisis gravidarum during pregnancy, I really appreciate this discussion. It was very disabling and I had difficulty functioning at all. In retrospect, I wish I had given myself the grace that Jess did by stopping working full time.
One request for Anne is I’d like to see more discussion about special needs parenting on this substack. It impacts 1 in 5 families, and it’s much more common experience than believed. The unsustainability of this type of parenting is rarely spoken about, especially for those who need to work to keep insurance or the lights on.
Here I am, unsolicited-- I have to 100% recommend for any humans who are out there feeling underwater/overwhelmed: "How to Keep House While Drowning" by KC Davis is *really* resonating as a way to remove the moral value from chores (which the author calls "care tasks" to reframe for us as ways to care for self... *when* they serve us.) Some mind-blowing stuff! I am late to this bandwagon (KC was also on Virginia Sole-Smith's podcast "Burnt Toast" lately if you'd rather just listen to her talk) but definitely relates to this thread and to our internal screams.... and is a very easy read. And available at the library here in my city so maybe also in yours. Good luck to us all...
The media is the biggest contributor to unsustainable, ever ratcheting ideals of motherhood. Aspiration sells. Aspiration yields clicks. FOMO yields clicks. We are left to solve the problem as individuals. I do think that the professional classes are unusually concerned with the problem, because they compete with each other constantly to be best mother almost like a work product.
Today I really want to scream. Homeless people are freezing in 16 degree temperatures and our city council just okayed a temporary warming shelter after denying it last week. There is no public support of people who cannot care for themselves. There are facilities but no one to do the tough work that is needed. We still have (at least in the West) the rugged individual, the self sufficiency mentality and belief that people who need help are lazy or inept or morally deficient. I would like to live in a commune or community where multiple generations live nearby and see themselves as an organism that gives and receives to maintain itself. I want to scream for the parents, mothers in particular, who need a break, need a place to hide other than the bathroom, who realize that motherhood was not the best choice for them but can’t send them back but can’t see a way forward. I am screaming under my breath for those who have increased physical needs as they face chronic illness and age but (see above) are afraid to admit it and languish as they grow weaker. Screaming lets me release anxiety and anger but what is the way forward as we try to change our world into one of shared care?
There is a story in my family about my mom’s aunt who raised 13 children in the early 1900s commenting that if she had known about vasectomies “John would have had the surgery a long time ago.” Her daughter said ,” but Mama you wouldn’t have had me!” To which Aunt Stella replied, “ Don’t reckon I’d have missed you.” And when my mother was 102 years old she was disoriented at times and asked who I was. I told her I was her youngest and she asked in disbelief if she had more children and I said yes. She looked at me and asked”whatever was I thinking?” Both of these women were poor white women who husbands died before anThere was no before or after school programs so I got myself to school and was a latchkey kid in the 60s. Things haven’t really improved in support of families in the last 6 decades. And I see my friends needing more supportive care
Yes! It is not a joke-- just the truth for sure. The joke, which I neglected to include in the post, is that I say we need a wife to do all the other stuff. Like Baer's Bonus Wife poem. And, thanks-- that excerpt resonates and I will need to read the article... "who exactly would be the person to do them?" indeed.... this has been one of a few great surprises of my parenting journey for sure.
One of the couples down the very short street from me just adopted their first baby. I don’t know them very well, but the first time I saw them with the baby all swaddled, I practically yelled at them to take my phone number and call me whenever they wanted someone else to just hold the baby for a minute so they could take a breath. Since I work from home, it’s a very real option that I can come over to help. Part of me is trying to enforce the old precedent from this town that everyone pitches in, as the old timers complain about how people don’t get together here anymore. My hope is to have a baby next year, and we’ll be three hours from a good hospital and our closest relatives will be a 16 hr drive. We chose where we settled, but whew a little additional infrastructure could mean so much, especially if we have any difficulties. Always appreciate you pushing these conversations and can’t wait to check out this book.
We adopted a newborn seven years ago and have made it this far because of the kindness of neighbors and strangers in no small part. I hope your neighbors take your number and call you!
If my mom doesn't give me this book for Christmas I will be surprised and disappointed.
That Arianna Rebolini post...it is so important to be able to talk about that. And a related but distinct idea that a lot of our lives would be better if we didn't have kids. Like, my kid is one of the best things in my life -- but that's partly because my kid's existence makes it so difficult for other parts of my life to be good and sustainable. A ton of things would be better if I hadn't had him, say if he had been a third miscarriage and we'd given up. I wouldn't have *him* and at this point it's really crushing to imagine that, but, like, those first weeks of the pandemic when everyone else was talking about the exciting meals they were making and my husband kept asking what we should make, I kept saying "you don't get it, those people have extra time now. we do not have extra time."
Was right there with you in the pandemic. All my friends were binge watching shows. I was….binge watching my baby. 🤣 signed, didn’t make a single loaf of banana bread.
I bought this book for myself as a Christmas present. I had my local bookseller order it for me and I picked it up yesterday. I took one look at it heartbreakingly knew I couldn’t wrap it and put it under the tree as I didn’t want me kids to see me opening it. So instead last night when they were in bed I started reading it.
As a mother of a 1.5 and 3 year old, I feel like I’m drowning, and I appreciate this article and discourse. I am wondering if Jess’s book has any mention of whiteness. I know the abhorrent Black maternal health crisis is mentioned — as it should be — but I’m beginning to wonder if white, American mothers (myself among them) are uniquely positioned to find mothering young children completely impossible. I wonder if this stems from the fact that, for most of my life, I have not had to face reality. I mean this literally, not philosophically. I was sheltered from so many problems due to my whiteness and class privilege. (One example: Police? No problem for white women. Why worry about that?)
Then, I had children. And I was forced to face THEIR realities including (but not limited to) THEIR negative emotions, my own which I had avoided at all costs. It has been a harrowing, incredibly difficult experience for me. And of course, worsened by living in a society with no structural support for parents.
But I wonder if the “unsustainability of American motherhood” is tied to the “unsustainability of white supremacy” as a foundation of our society.
Some examples spring to mind: For decades, gun violence has been a problem in predominantly Black schools. Now, it’s a problem in white schools and us white people are all “oh my God how could this happen?” We’ve been LETTING it happen; we’ve been avoiding it; we’ve been sheltered from reality. And of course, childcare (and college!) should be affordable, but for how long have white women been exploiting women of color for childcare as a “solution” and not thinking about, for example, the fact that their nanny can’t afford to raise her own children?
Have these problems always existed and we are just finally facing them?
I am going to close with a quote from James Baldwin I think about all the time — I feel there is connection to how difficult motherhood feels for me, though I can’t fully articulate it.
“The American sense of reality is dictated by what Americans are trying to avoid, and if you’re trying to avoid reality, how can you face it?”
I thought of a more succinct way to say this: White women are the most infantilized demographic in the US. Does this make it harder for us to mother?
I think this is a worthwhile and critical thing to note, and I'd love for the author to dig into this a bit. As a biracial woman with white presenting children, this is just what I have noticed: within middle and upper middle class white families there isn't the same push to know and grow in domestic related skills. And why not? Childcare? You're above that, outsource it! Cooking and cleaning? No way, outsource it. This is why at the beginning of the pandemic there was such a shock for *some* (highly educated, urban, usually white) women-- it was the first time they were fully responsible for domestic labor and because they hadn't been taught basic homemaking skills it was a rude awakening. I know so few young woman who babysit. In college I watched peers pursue only career-boosting internships. I worked at a daycare and later as a nanny, twice. When I became a mother at thirty it still had with it the shocks that come with entering into a new phase, but the years of watching other people's children became treasured job experience. I could never be above domesticity because I really couldn't swing the unpaid internship and didn't have a trust fund bolstering me up. I also loved children and valued domestic labor, which of course, has made motherhood significantly easier.
Yes!! This comment brings up so much for me. I am a white SAHM who was raised by a white SAHM. My mother raised 4 kids in the “women can do it all” 90’s and it, sadly, seems to me that she didn’t value the (immense) domestic labor she did then, and, in a way, doesn’t value what I do now. She never taught me basic domestic skills. (She did it ALL.) It’s, of course, much more than just her. Most of my white mom friends work outside the home, and when I complain (who wouldn’t?) about motherhood from time to time, the proposed answer is almost always “get a job and send your kids to daycare.” I think what I really need to learn is: How do *I* learn to value domestic labor, when it seems my racial group sees it as something best avoided?
Yep. My white middle class mom literally did it ALL and doesn't understand why I struggle so much to do it all. Her advice to me was to just sleep less! Sorry not sorry mom, but I actually need to sleep more because of my chronic health issues or I stop functioning.
I think it's because the expectations we had growing up as white girls into white women didn't match the reality. She grew up working on a farm and wanted differently for her daughter - hence the big academic push and no domestic push. I grew up seeing the inequality of my parents but expected differently when my husband and I became parents and then was shocked when that didn't happen. Instead of white heterosexual-appearing couples dividing the labor, it all still falls on the mom, with the only way to survive being to outsource it.
I feel like I will never get out of debt because I don't have enough hours in the day to not outsource domestic tasks. I have mostly male friends and no matter how many times I try to talk to them about mental and emotional labor stuff they don't get it at all. It's maddening.
A reply to the portion of this about our mothers having done it all for us... same here from a woman raised immigrant/working class white Hispanic family.
I joke with my partner (a man) that I was raised to think I would have a career and someone else would do what our mothers did. As a man, he was raised the same way.
So what we really need is another person to do everything our mothers did, which we have no interest or time to do as we both work in full-time jobs and are both "breadwinners" as well as parents. I suppose other people (smarter people, perhaps) hire folks to do this for them. We haven't done that-- before or during pandemic. Mostly we just share duties and let things be a bit messier than our mothers did-- and sometimes, we just struggle. Also, we are paying for childcare for two kids not yet old enough for public school. So we pay a lot for that.
There's a poem by Kate Baer in "And Yet"-- called "Help Wanted: A Bonus Wife," I believe, about exactly this. A line: "Duties include perpetual motion, detailed observation, the ability to suppress a violent scream. You don't have to be beautiful. You don't have to be anything but here."
"I joke with my partner (a man) that I was raised to think I would have a career and someone else would do what our mothers did. As a man, he was raised the same way."
Yep, it's not a joke but the truth! This is one of my favorite articles ever that talks about this as part of the parenting gap: https://threepointsrelationships.com/gen-xs-grand-disappointment/
"Her husband had not done these things. He said they simply were not an option for him because of his work schedule. He added, sincerely, “but I don’t expect you to do these things.”
She replied, “Well if not you and not me, then who exactly would be the person to do them?” He stared blankly.
I understood her frustration and I also understood that he truly had never considered this before, not because he thinks women should be in the kitchen and home raising children. Quite the contrary. He frequently talks about how much he admires what his wife has done in her career and that he would not want to be with a woman who preferred traditional gender roles. However, because he is a man raised in a culture that has allowed him not to have to think really think about these things, the thought that having children would impact his career or the way he does work never crossed his mind."
“Big academic push and no domestic push” = my experience, exactly.
A lot of this sounds like classic misogyny. (And nothing has brought up misogyny in my own life like motherhood.)
I guess I want to understand more how whiteness plays into it all - is it the classic failures of white feminism? (Which I need to learn more about.)
Is it related to the Paulo Freire idea: “When educating is not liberating, the dream of the oppressed is to become the oppressor.”
I mean, I get it - education gave me easier access to work where I'd use my brain instead of wearing out my body with the benefits of a stable salary with paid time off.
I'd like to understand how white feminism plays a role in it all, too. I guess it's the underlying assumption that if you're successful enough in the white collar world that you can just outsource the domestic work to a woman of color?
I'm sorry I am just replying now... I don't have notifications turned on. I think you're really on to something here with the academic push and not the domestic one. I often feel like there's a one dimensional view of success (that isn't true and is quite outdated). I noticed the Gen X-ers in my neighborhood with teenagers don't encourage their daughters to babysit, they're focused on them getting made captain (which I'll admit, I think is a ridiculous and silly pursuit) so they can get into a "good" college. I think underneath this is anxiety around whiteness (I live in a majority white community) and wanting their children to succeed when there's competition from other students who have had more access to private schools, ACT tutors, etc... I also think we can't divorce the ingrained idea that many, many white elites (including white feminists) hold that domestic labor isn't for them.
I'm going to come at this from a different point of view, as a lifelong single person. I have all the compassion in the world for stressed out moms and understand our system in the US really is screwed up. In my 20's / 30s my best friend in college, who everyone agreed was "most likely to succeed" got pregnant with twins immediately after graduation, then had another girl a few years later. Dad was not much help so I was there a lot to help with babysitting and just being there with moral support and caring for the girls. So I DO get it. However, I also noted that the topic of how addressing these problems is going to impact others is somewhat elided, and framed as if they don't "care about others" or their self-interest is less important than a mom's. There is already a considerable "single penalty" in the US that some studies estimate amounts to almost a million dollars over a lifetime. Higher tax rate, unshared costs, etc. But it's also a social penalty--the expectation that singles can take up any slack in the workplace because they "don't have families" ( I once had a job where I had to work every holiday for just that reason), being taken less seriously (especially as a single female), or even seen as somehow socially "off" because you're not married. So, yes, I do wonder how addressing these issues that do so obviously need addressing is going to impact my particular social group. Because it will, and if we object to that, or raise concerns, I guarantee being vilified as "not caring" will be the kind reaction.
Not a bio mom but have helped raise children and have seen a lot of children being raised in my family and I wish more people talked about the women who hate being parents/mothers. Some people really hate it and they shouldn’t be shamed for that! I love children but not all people do and that’s fine! And the problem is all of these messages society sends women don’t allow for that at all, and it’s not like you can send them back once you’ve had them and realize you hate it. I want a world where we allow for all of it. And yes some, maybe most, women love their children even if they hate parenting but also some don’t. And wouldn’t it be a better world for those kids if there was community that could help support that woman instead of shaming her? That’s where my hope goes-into a society that truly supports the children and the parents in it.
This. The discussion has made me think about my own mom, with whom I have a fraught relationship. While she would deny it, I suspect she did not enjoy parenting and resented what she had to give up. You can't always suppress that multi-year frustration, so it came out in other ways that did some damage. If social expectations had given her permission to be conflicted, she might have been happier. I have a bit more compassion for her now.
I was curious to read some of the responses to Arianna Rebolini’s tweet about not enjoying being a mom, and while I was scrolling through her feed to find it I noticed that she posted an update on 9/15/22 saying that she now does very much enjoy being a mom. That update just made me wonder is there anyone who dislikes parenting for longer than just a 3 year blip while their kids are young? I feel like the update undid the point of the original tweet which was to normalize not loving being a mom.
There's a great book called "Regretting Motherhood" by Orna Donath that you might check out to see the perspectives of people who never enjoyed being a parent! I think the older the kids get, the more taboo it is to say that you dislike parenting, so it can be hard to find stuff to read about it. Donath did a big study of women (located in Israel) who regretted becoming mothers; women with kids of all ages (even grandmothers!) who discuss their dislike of the parental role.
Love this suggestion — I want to check it out! I think you're absolutely correct that it becomes more taboo to say that you dislike parenting as you get farther into it (because of the myth that it somehow gets easier, so you shouldn't dislike it). Lack of access to birth control + societal norms made it so that there was so little choice in whether or not a woman became a mother until very, very recently — of *course* there are people who didn't like it, even if that dislike remains, for so many, unspeakable.
I still need to read the newsletter but I gotta say I am SO excited for this podcast episode with Virginia!!
As someone who also had hyperemisis gravidarum during pregnancy, I really appreciate this discussion. It was very disabling and I had difficulty functioning at all. In retrospect, I wish I had given myself the grace that Jess did by stopping working full time.
One request for Anne is I’d like to see more discussion about special needs parenting on this substack. It impacts 1 in 5 families, and it’s much more common experience than believed. The unsustainability of this type of parenting is rarely spoken about, especially for those who need to work to keep insurance or the lights on.
Here I am, unsolicited-- I have to 100% recommend for any humans who are out there feeling underwater/overwhelmed: "How to Keep House While Drowning" by KC Davis is *really* resonating as a way to remove the moral value from chores (which the author calls "care tasks" to reframe for us as ways to care for self... *when* they serve us.) Some mind-blowing stuff! I am late to this bandwagon (KC was also on Virginia Sole-Smith's podcast "Burnt Toast" lately if you'd rather just listen to her talk) but definitely relates to this thread and to our internal screams.... and is a very easy read. And available at the library here in my city so maybe also in yours. Good luck to us all...
The media is the biggest contributor to unsustainable, ever ratcheting ideals of motherhood. Aspiration sells. Aspiration yields clicks. FOMO yields clicks. We are left to solve the problem as individuals. I do think that the professional classes are unusually concerned with the problem, because they compete with each other constantly to be best mother almost like a work product.
LOVE Jessica's work and her book. Thanks for a great discussion!
Thank you for this wonderful conversation.
Today I really want to scream. Homeless people are freezing in 16 degree temperatures and our city council just okayed a temporary warming shelter after denying it last week. There is no public support of people who cannot care for themselves. There are facilities but no one to do the tough work that is needed. We still have (at least in the West) the rugged individual, the self sufficiency mentality and belief that people who need help are lazy or inept or morally deficient. I would like to live in a commune or community where multiple generations live nearby and see themselves as an organism that gives and receives to maintain itself. I want to scream for the parents, mothers in particular, who need a break, need a place to hide other than the bathroom, who realize that motherhood was not the best choice for them but can’t send them back but can’t see a way forward. I am screaming under my breath for those who have increased physical needs as they face chronic illness and age but (see above) are afraid to admit it and languish as they grow weaker. Screaming lets me release anxiety and anger but what is the way forward as we try to change our world into one of shared care?
There is a story in my family about my mom’s aunt who raised 13 children in the early 1900s commenting that if she had known about vasectomies “John would have had the surgery a long time ago.” Her daughter said ,” but Mama you wouldn’t have had me!” To which Aunt Stella replied, “ Don’t reckon I’d have missed you.” And when my mother was 102 years old she was disoriented at times and asked who I was. I told her I was her youngest and she asked in disbelief if she had more children and I said yes. She looked at me and asked”whatever was I thinking?” Both of these women were poor white women who husbands died before anThere was no before or after school programs so I got myself to school and was a latchkey kid in the 60s. Things haven’t really improved in support of families in the last 6 decades. And I see my friends needing more supportive care
Yes! It is not a joke-- just the truth for sure. The joke, which I neglected to include in the post, is that I say we need a wife to do all the other stuff. Like Baer's Bonus Wife poem. And, thanks-- that excerpt resonates and I will need to read the article... "who exactly would be the person to do them?" indeed.... this has been one of a few great surprises of my parenting journey for sure.